The mobile browser used to be so very limited, destroying the functionality of most websites and leaving these empty shells that only allowed you to scrape content off of them. With technologies like HTML5 growing in popularity, and the hardware inside the average smartphone putting the laptop I had a few years ago to shame, it only makes sense that the browser would take advantage of this brave new world and offer a better mobile browsing experience. Mozilla, once the scrappy underdog in a world dominated by Internet Explorer, has completely revamped the UI and performance of their Firefox Beta for Android in an attempt to grab some of that all important mobile browser market share.

The Firefox for Android project has had a long and visible evolution. At one time called Fennec, the open source browser project has been around since the Nexus One. As it slowly adapted to the mobile ecosystem, Fennec grew into Firefox, and with its latest update exists to provide a fast and powerful mobile browser for nearly every Android device out there. The new Firefox Beta supports everything from Android 2.2 all the way up, and works on both phones and tablets.

The new UI has been optimized for Android 4.0 devices, allowing for a software menu button in the to corner of the device when it is appropriate. The biggest change you will see in the UI is a more standard navigation system. Gone are the days where you access more tabs in Firefox by swiping to the right, and accessing navigation tools be swiping to the left. All of that has been replaced, tucked away either in the Menu function or in the tabbed interface, which allows you to quickly switch between tabs. Everything about the UI is rounded corners, in fact you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful of sharp edges in the whole Firefox Beta UI.

The biggest improvement in Firefox Beta is the performance. Firefox Beta now uses hardware acceleration so the app loads websites very fast, and quickly refreshes when you switch back and forth between tabs. Panning and zooming are incredibly smooth as well, due to the hardware acceleration. If you are a Firefox user on any of your other devices, you can use Firefox Sync to access your tabs on those other devices. Also added to this version of Firefox Beta are the new Add-Ons section.

While it is empty now, Mozilla has made it possible for plugin-style supplements to Firefox to be written by developers. This is the very same feature that helped Firefox for the PC gain so many followers early on. Using this, any developer can write and add-on for Firefox Beta ans submit it to Mozilla to add to this repository.

Firefox Beta is available in the Google Play Store for any Android device 2.2 and higher.